Maybe I read wrong, but I got the impression that Jennifer was actually doing everything around the apartment?

I agree - that was the impression I got as well. In fact, the OP stated as such:

I have been handeling everything for the past few months including paying the rent and getting everything ready to start to leave.
...
I always have his PT//ACU's washed, dried, and laid out for the next work day, always have the dog pee and poop cleaned up( they are small dogs), always have the dishes clean before I go to bed, always make sure that if I know what time he will be home then I have dinner hot and ready for him

I have brought him dinner last week everytime he asked and today I was reading a book and fell asleep. He got mad about that.

And I'm sorry, but if DH expected my kitchen to be his personal delivery service (delivering dinner to him at work), yes, I would be furious. I'd be happy to pack something he could take with him to work, or to have something ready for him when he got home. But expecting her to deliver his dinner to him every night? I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.

And breaking electronics in his anger? Beyond unacceptable.

I *DO NOT* agree with "just separating" to keep the benefits...its morally wrong and I'm pretty sure illegal.

It is illegal - it's fraud.

How long has he been like this? How long have you been together?
I am not siding against you but I do agree that as a stay at home wife, especially to someone working long hours, he should not have to do anything when he gets home unless it is something you cannot physically do, like moving furniture. Maybe there is more to it than that, but I was not clear from your OP.
What are his "conditions"? Has he said he just does not want to be married anymore, or is he just angry at the current situation? If you do want to make it work, and he does have "conditions", for example, if you do this and this I will be happy, I would try it for a little while and see if anything changes.

I agree that if you are a stay at home wife then your DH should not have to come home from 12 hours of work and have to do house work and take the dog out because you have all day to do these things. I dont think it is too much for him to ask of you to take care of the house stuff when he is taking care of making the money. However this does not mean he has the right to break your things or put you down. You said you are doing everything around the house but he is saying you do the bare minimum so maybe you guys have different ideas about what are realistic expectations. Thats where Communication comes in handy. Maybe finding out exactly what his expectations of you are would help you decided if you want to stay or not.

I am a little confused because you said you went to Korea to save your marriage. What did you marriage need saving from before you moved there? Were there other issues before you went to Korea or were they the same issues you are having now?

If she is paying the rent, is it money that he is giving her and what she has to actually do is walk it down to the office? That is the impression I got from it. Not that she was literally making sure the money was available.

Posted By PenguinMaestro on 07 Mar 2011 09:42 PM

Posted By BreBre09 on 07 Mar 2011 08:15 PM
riggerswife, if you worked a 12 hr shift and your husband didnt work and you came home to "your share of cooking and cleaning" you wouldnt be bothered by that?

Honestly? no, I wouldn't.  Why? Because I help put the house in whatever condition it's in, just  by living in it, and I was taught that when I make a mess, it's my responsibility to clean it up. 

Good grief! What kind of mess are you making?? LOL!!!!! Sorry, but being a grown man, he shouldnt be messing up the house like a 2 yr old. Heck he isnt even hardly there!!! lol

Its all his crap everywhere. I can have the house spotless and not 20 min after he gets home I have bags, dirty pts and ACU's, muddy boots, lunch's dirty tupperware, a sweat stained pc hat/beret and a hurricane of scrap papers and binders of work thats been brought home, strewn all over the house. I'm sorry but I'm not takiing care of that mess. I don't mind loading the dishwasher and vacuum and throwing in the laundry during the day. But I'm not cleaning up HIS crap and weekends he has a honey do list as long as I want it to be. I certainly make dinner but if I call and tell him its fend for yourself night and he needs to figure out his own dinner and he got pissy with me let me tell you it would be a long time before he had a meal waiting for him when he got home again.

Posted By Riggerwife on 08 Mar 2011 04:46 PM
Its all his crap everywhere. I can have the house spotless and not 20 min after he gets home I have bags, dirty pts and ACU's, muddy boots, lunch's dirty tupperware, a sweat stained pc hat/beret and a hurricane of scrap papers and binders of work thats been brought home, strewn all over the house. I'm sorry but I'm not takiing care of that mess. I don't mind loading the dishwasher and vacuum and throwing in the laundry during the day. But I'm not cleaning up HIS crap and weekends he has a honey do list as long as I want it to be. I certainly make dinner but if I call and tell him its fend for yourself night and he needs to figure out his own dinner and he got pissy with me let me tell you it would be a long time before he had a meal waiting for him when he got home again.

Ditto. if I know he's had a really stressful day, I might help him a little, but he is capable!

Posted By BreBre09 on 08 Mar 2011 03:41 PM

Good grief! What kind of mess are you making?? LOL!!!!! Sorry, but being a grown man, he shouldnt be messing up the house like a 2 yr old. Heck he isnt even hardly there!!! lol

I generally don't make that much of a mess myself.  DH, though?  When I'm not home he'll leave dishes out on the counters, won't wash the pots and pans, and will generally just plop stuff down the moment he walks in the house (like his gym bag, the mail, etc) and walk off like it no longer exists.  Laundry? sometimes it makes its way into the bin - more often it ends up on the bedroom or closet floor.

Now the pots/pans we have an arrangement on - whomever cooks, the other cleans.  DH enjoys cooking and it relaxes him at the end of the day, so he generally cooks and I clean up.  But he can manage to put his own plate in the dishwasher, seriously.  He destroys the kitchen when he cooks - in contrast, I clean as I cook so when I do cook, he never has as much to do

We have had times where he's been the only one working and I've been home, and I'm sorry but just because I may be home doesn't mean I need to spend all day cleaning up after messes he makes because he just doesn't care to put things in their place the first time.  Other cleaning, sure.  But it won't kill him to bring his gym bag to its place in our closet, instead of dropping it next to the door as soon as he gets in, kwim?

All that said, DH is really good about this.  No matter what the working situation is, we both agree that we both have responsibilities around the house.  Sometimes he needs to be reminded about them, sometimes I need to be reminded   But we work together on it.

Posted By BreBre09 on 08 Mar 2011 01:08 PM
If she is paying the rent, is it money that he is giving her and what she has to actually do is walk it down to the office? That is the impression I got from it. Not that she was literally making sure the money was available.

My impression is that she's the one taking care of the finances - that he may be making the money, but that she's the one paying the bills and budgets and such.  Perhaps that is incorrect, it wasn't really clear.

Either way, there are a lot of posts that seem to be lambasting this woman for not doing enough, when she details out that she is in fact doing all of the cooking and cleaning and taking care of the dogs, and he still doesn't think that's enough. 

Getting mad and berating her for not delivering him his dinner at work?  It doesn't matter what our working situation is - DH would never ask me to deliver his dinner to him at work nightly.  It would either be packed (by one of us) before he went, or he'd have it when he got home.  And breaking laptops and cameras in anger? How is that not a red flag?

**this is not related to the poster I quoted:
A lot of this thread comes across as "well, she must not be doing enough for him." (not that anyone has actually said that, that's just how parts are coming across)  and it surprises me a bit, because there are some definite red flags in his behavior and comments towards her.

Well, yeah, if that's the attitude, them maybe she does need to throw the towel in. If its gonna hurt that bad to do the dishes that he dirty ups, or if he doesnt cook after a 12 hr shift, then yeah, she might want to reconsider marriage.

What are you takling about? She IS doing it, and he's telling her what she's doing isn't enough. Again, her quote:

I always have his PT//ACU's washed, dried, and laid out for the next work day, always have the dog pee and poop cleaned up( they are small dogs), always have the dishes clean before I go to bed, always make sure that if I know what time he will be home then I have dinner hot and ready for him

I strive to make him happy to the best of my ability and it seems like its never good enough.

What more is she supposed to do?

As an aside...I don't know if your response, brebre, is also a poke at the arrangement DH and I have, which I was discussing. I'm assuming, and hoping, that it wasn't.

Posted By BreBre09 on 08 Mar 2011 06:37 PM
Well, yeah, if that's the attitude, them maybe she does need to throw the towel in. If its gonna hurt that bad to do the dishes that he dirty ups, or if he doesnt cook after a 12 hr shift, then yeah, she might want to reconsider marriage.

I think the overall attitude is simply that both parties in a marriage need to be responsible adults. While I am happy to help DH get thru his hectic schedule in the small ways I can, he needs to be able and WILLING to do it on his own from time to time. As well as going out of his way to help me out from time to time and do something small for me. For example, if he needs to throw an emergency load of PT's or something in the laundry, fold the load that I put in the dryer earlier in the day rather than pile it on top leaving it for me to deal with in the morning. KWIM? Marriage is a partnership that isn't always equal in the load but one carries over the other from day to day but it should be a priority to make the others life easier in some small way from day to day.

As for cooking after a 12 hour shift.....What if she was working as well? Does that mean they don't eat because someone who worked all day shouldn't have to cook at the end of the day? The house would never be clean. They'd have to buy new clothes because a person who works can't be expected to throw a pile of clothes into a machine and hit a button? Thats absurd. Not to mention being a SAHW and keeping up with the house is a long day as well. If you are "expected" to have the house spotless when he gets home thats sweeping, vacuuming, dishes, counters, dusting, laundry, folding and putting away the laundry, bathrooms etc every single day. Which takes time and is exhausting. Especially during the first few months of pregnancy.

To sum up- I'm happy to tend to the house while he is the sole income in the home and DH appreciates it certainly. But the day he expects me to do it is the day I stop.

no, no pokings, just saying, if its an issue that he expects a clean house, dinner, and laundry to be done after a 12 hr shift, she may need the single life where its just her and her daughter and she has no one to answer to. Everyone has an arrangement that works for them. If in your house (penguinmastro) you have no problem cooking, cleaning, etc aftr working 12 hours, then thats what works for your home. But obviously she has a problem because she is venting about it. You didnt come on here venting, she did. So no, there was no poke for you. All I am saying is, if whomever your share your life with, there should be a mutal understanding about how things will be around the house. And that should be respected. BUt for, me, BREBRE, it wouold be an understood thing to take care of the house while he worked all day. And I wouldnt say, oh I had to cook today, he made me clean, he made me do laundy, he even made me go to the apt office and drop the rent check off.

If 2 ppl work, then yeah, chores can be evenly divided. But geesh! 12 hr is a long time! If I had an 8 hr job, I would still give the poor man a break!!!!

I think the overall attitude is simply that both parties in a marriage need to be responsible adults. While I am happy to help DH get thru his hectic schedule in the small ways I can, he needs to be able and WILLING to do it on his own from time to time. As well as going out of his way to help me out from time to time and do something small for me.

Thank you, Riggerwife, for putting it into words so well! I couldn't agree more.

I'm still not understanding where this idea that the OP isn't doing enough is coming from. She's said she's doing everything she listed...what more is she supposed to do?

If I had an 8 hr job, I would still give the poor man a break!!!!

nor do I understand what's wrong about both partners giving each other a break once in a while. That's what true partnership is about - working together, supporting each other.

Welcome

no, no pokings, just saying, if its an issue that he expects a clean house, dinner, and laundry to be done after a 12 hr shift, she may need the single life where its just her and her daughter and she has no one to answer to

I think we're reading her OP differently. I didn't read her OP as her complaining about actually doing those things for her husband - but that her husband didn't appreciate what she was doing and that nothing she did was ever good enough for him.

Those are very different issues, imo.